Scripture: Nehemiah 8:1-18
Sermon Series: Nehemiah: Making a Difference for God – Sermon 10

If you were looking for another reason to NOT move to Illinois, I’ve got one. Currently, Illinois is winning this year’s Tornado Playoffs. No pun intended but they’re killing it. So far in 2026, Illinois has had over 220 tornadoes. It’s not only the “Windy City,” it’s the “Windy State. The closest second is Indiana with 88. Wisconsin is #8 with 51. But it’s not just the initial destruction from a tornado. After a tornado, power, water and other outages can last anywhere from a few hours to several weeks.

What’s the hardest thing for you to live without? If you faced a crisis like a tornado or even a fire that destroyed not just your home but your neighborhood, what would be the toughest thing for you to live without? Power, water, food, shelter, safety?

How would you do without a Bible? Would it bother you not to have one? Did you know the Bible is banned, restricted, or unavailable in 52 countries?

How many Bibles do you own? What about Bible apps? When Jane and I were at a conference last spring, they shared a video of the Kikongos, a group in Central Africa, receiving their first Bible in their language. The excitement of those Christians receiving their first Bible was so thrilling. I was weeping as I watched their exuberance.

How important is the Bible to you? Do you read it regularly? Do you seek to live by God’s Word, its commands and directives? Are you convicted by what it says? Do you obey God’s Word no matter what the cost?

Nehemiah 8 is about the centrality of the Bible in these Jewish exiles’ lives and in their worship. Our English word law which in the Hebrew is torah appears nine times in this chapter (vs. 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14 and 18).

We’re over halfway through Nehemiah. Jewish exiles had returned to Jerusalem. They rebuilt the temple and now have rebuilt the walls. Most people believe the Nehemiah is about the rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.

While that’s true for the first six chapters, the focus of Nehemiah, the most important part is about rebuilding the people. If they had rebuilt the walls but failed to rebuild the people, failed to turn them again to God and His Word, it would have been a total failure. The mission was not walls. It was people. They moved from rebuilding to revival.

We’re moving toward building an addition. Please hear me. If we build a building and not people, if we fail to use it as a tool for lives to be transformed, we’ve failed. Our mission is not a great building. It’s about a great God. It’s seeing folk come to Christ and become committed disciples. Our purpose statement is, Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by continually making more followers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Nehemiah 8 is about a revival. It’s what the Church desperately needs today. It’s what our church needs today.

A native of India writing to a friend about a revival they were having, exclaimed, We are having a great rebible here! It’s what we want. Revival begins with a re-bible. That must be our prayer, Lord, Send a Re-Bible. There’s no revival without a renewed commitment to God’s Word. Nehemiah 8 is all about re-bible.

Strange as it may sound, revival doesn’t relate directly to those who haven’t committed their lives to Christ. You can’t revive the spiritually dead. You can only revive the spiritually alive. An outcome of revival is God ignites the fire of His Word in believers and mobilizes His people to go and win the lost.

As we work through this chapter, we want to break it into Four Prayers.. If you’re taking notes…

1. Lord, increase my desire for Your Word, vss. 1-7. 

As the Scottish novelist, Sir Walter Scott lay dying, said, “Bring the Book.” His servant knowing his multi-volume library asked, “What book, Sir?” Sir Walter Scott’s famous response was, There’s only One Book—the Bible!

Why do we want the Bible read when we’re dying? When I’m called in to a deathbed, I’ll read the Bible. Families want the Bible read at funerals, but don’t we really need the Bible more while we’re living?

According to a recent Lifeway Research project, only 31% of those who attend church read the Bible every day and another 30% do so a few times a week. Some engage once a week (14%) or a few times a month (11%).

What if you’re driving at night and only 30% of the drivers have their headlights on? Or, if you went to work and only 30% of your co-workers showed up? If Christ-followers are going to live like Christ, we must be in God’s Word. The Bible is God’s GPS for our lives.

Contrast that with the fact that the average American spends 5 hours a day looking at their smartphone. When factoring in all electronic devices, total daily screen time jumps to between 7 to 12 hours daily.

Our culture, including Christians, are awash with varied problems and issues. Do you struggle with anxiety or anger? What about other emotional issues? Do you have relational issues with your spouse, your children or others? Do you struggle with finances or debt? Will you find answers on your smartphone? Not really. You could hire a consultant or therapist.

Why not start with the Word of God? God’s Word is medicine for our souls. But we need to read it, not just when we’re dying but when we’re living. God’s Word addresses nearly every problem we face. Read and re-read the Bible. Start with a book of the Bible and read it from start to finish.

This is the first time Ezra the priest appears in Nehemiah. He’d arrived in Jerusalem 14 years before. On that day he probably read from the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, the foundation of the Jewish faith. It’s estimated the crowd was some 50,000 at the Water Gate.

Verse 1 needs to jump out at us, And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the Book of the Law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel (Nehemiah 8:1). The people were hungry for God’s Word. They craved it and then Ezra read it for something like 6 hours. If a church service goes over an hour today, we’re checking the time. In other parts of the globe like China or Africa, worship services will easily go for 3 hours.

The average NFL game lasts 3 hours. How often do we say, “That was so long.” What does that say about our values? When an individual or group, longs to read the Bible, revival is often not far behind.

God’s Word must be central to our worship. 

You can measure a person’s opinion of God by their opinion of God’s Word. You can measure a church’s opinion of God by their opinion of God’s Word. You can attend some churches, and Scripture will never be read. That’s a religious country club. We read and study God’s Word because we need to know what God thinks. The public reading of Scripture is essential to worship. 1 Timothy 4:13, Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture…

At Grace we’re committed to “expositional preaching.” It’s why we’re working our way through Nehemiah. Expositional preaching is preaching focused on explaining the meaning of Scripture in its historical and grammatical context. It’s explaining what the Bible says to a contemporary audience who are often unfamiliar with the cultural/historical settings the passage was written in. “Exposition” means a setting forth or explanation.

Expositional preaching is the explanation of Scripture based on careful studying of a passage. It’s the primary call of the preacher. 2 Timothy 4:2, Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.

If you’re on the operating table, you don’t want your surgeon to say to a nurse, “Hand me one of them sharp thingamajigs.” You want him to have a specific name for a specific tool to perform a specific job. Words matter. When it comes to our bodies, we have very high expectations of our doctors. We should expect even more when it comes to the doctors of our soul – pastors and teachers of the Word of God. They handle the word of truth, ministering to body, soul, and mind. They better know what they’re talking about. Throughout Church History strong churches had strong preaching. The Bible was the authority. What the Reformers called Sola Scriptura. The decadent times in Church History were when preaching declined.

The trend today are multi-site churches and God is using it. I do have a concern. Many have a live worship band but pipe in the preaching. That communicates priorities. Many choose a church for the music, not the preaching. God’s Word, not our feelings, must be our yardstick.

We must listen to God’s Word. 

A high platform was raised for Ezra so he could be easily seen. It may have been a model for the first pulpit. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law (Nehemiah 8:3b). We live in the age of distraction. Let me suggest then…

Listen attentively. 

God’s people expected to hear directly from God by the Word of God. They weren’t playing on their phones or whispering to the person next to them. Can I give a few suggestions about attentiveness?

Get a good night’s sleep. If you work outside, sitting in a worship service can be tough and falling asleep in church can become a bad habit. Pray before you come. Read the passage being preached beforehand. Ask the Lord to open the preacher’s eyes and for him to communicate well. Ask the Lord to open your eyes to areas of growth in your life. Take notes. Involving more senses helps retention. Bring and open your Bible. It will help you listen.

Several commentators note that since they were attentive, children must not have been present. Let me encourage you to use our nursery and Grace Kids. We do background checks. We’re committed to children being safe. We reserve the back rows for parents with children who want to keep them with them during the service. We know that the world has changed. It can take a bit for parents to feel comfortable entrusting their child’s care to others.

Most of us think a crying child is a distraction. The bigger distraction can be a laughing child. I’m not asking you to confess today because I’m guilty. I’ve sat behind a child, and they’re peeking over the seat and I’m wiggling my fingers at them…and I know better. Let’s help each other be attentive.

Conduct yourself reverently. 

The passage says they stood for the reading of Scripture. They raised their hands and bowed with their faces to the ground. This is descriptive not prescriptive. There are some who say we must always stand for the reading of Scripture. Or we must lift our hands in worship to worship. Somehow they never say you must bow with your face to the ground. If you want to lift your hands in worship, it’s great! What God desires though is a reverent, submissive heart.

I’m not a big Christian concert person. Some years ago, friends asked us to attend a concert with them. The group was great. They looked so worshipful. It later came out that one of the members was having an affair with another Christian artist. God wants our hearts not just the outer symbols of worship.

The message for us is that when God’s Words is being read or preached, God demands respect. We’ve lost respect for virtually all authorities today.

Imagine the CEO of your company is having a company meeting. They’re highly respected but someone in the crowd is cutting up. If they were caught, none of us would be shocked if they were terminated. In a much greater way, we must respect our sovereign Lord and His Word!

2. Lord, increase my understanding of Your Word, vs. 8.

They read from the book, from the Law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading (Nehemiah 8:8). Some form of understand is used five times in this chapter.

Have you ever had a teacher or preacher, you’ve sat through they’re whole talked but you don’t have a clue of what they actually said? A foundational part of reading the Bible and preaching is that it’s understood.

John Wesley said of his preaching, I design plain truth for plain people. God used that plain spoken preacher to start a revival and launch countless churches. When he died, his churches had 71,668 members in Britain and 43,265 members in America.

The Levites served as interpreters explaining God’s Word. Here we have the public proclamation of God’s Word in the large assembly and personal application in small groups. Small groups are vital for a believer’s spiritual health and the church’s health. Please join one this fall. It will help you grow.

Preaching and teaching must be anchored in God’s Word. True preaching let’s God speak from His Word. It’s not our post-modern, “this is my truth” or “this is what it means to me.”

May we come eager to hear God’s voice. The job of the preacher isn’t to be novel. He’s to simply tell what someone else has said – God.

The Bible is not some book about the ancient world. It’s a message for today. It’s timeless and to be life changing. The preacher’s job is to understand what God is saying and then bridge ancient culture to today’s world. The goal of understanding is a transformed life. That only comes from application. Application is the hardest part of understanding. We love truth as long it doesn’t make us uncomfortable or require changes on our part.

3. Lord, increase my response to Your Word, vs. 9-12. 

American Christians love to learn. God doesn’t want us to just learn. He wants us to apply His truth to our lives. A disobedient Christian is miserable. What are the right responses when we see overlooked biblical truth?

Repentance. 

The people wept when they heard and understood God’s Word because they realized how much they had sinned against God. When was the last time you wept because of your sin? The more the light of God’s Word shines into our hearts, the more we see areas that don’t conform to His righteousness. Spiritual renewal always involves repentance.

God wants to make us holy, not happy, and we’ll never be happy if we’re not holy. God’s Word cuts into our souls and it hurts. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). Is God’s Word cutting into your heart today? Is the cancer of sin being addressed in your life?

Joy. 

The clouds of repentance should quickly break up, allowing the sunshine of godly joy to flood our hearts. God never wounds us to hurt us, but only to heal. Once you’ve been hurt by conviction, Satan wants to keep you in the pit of shame, whereas God wants to restore you to the mountain of forgiveness. If Satan can keep you in the pit, you’ll sin more because you reason, “what’s the use?” Satan loves to beat us up with the Giant of despair to quote, John Bunyan. But the joy of knowing God has forgiven all our sins, and we are His people should fill our hearts.

Compassion. 

Ezra and Nehemiah encouraged the people to send portions from part of the sacrifices to those who had nothing. Caring for those who have less is a fruit of God working in our hearts. Living for Jesus always produces compassion in our hearts. His salvation is to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds (Titus 2:14). Our great example is our Savior. One must wonder if someone doesn’t care and show compassion to others, do they truly know Jesus?

4. Lord, increase my obedience to your Word, vs. 13-18. 

The second day they came back to read God’s Word again and saw new light. As you read and study God’s Word, God gives you light often of old Truth. We grow in what’s called sanctification as we spend time in the Bible.

There were seven feasts given to Israel to commemorate God’s deliverance of the Jewish people and mirror an agricultural and prophetic calendar. Instructions for all seven are laid out in Leviticus 23. These times of celebration are important not only to Israel, but to the overall message of the Bible. Each symbolizes an aspect of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Here we see how these Jews found great joy in obedience. As they paid attention to what they heard, they discovered they weren’t fully following the Lord. While they’d celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles in the past, they apparently failed to set up booths made from branches. They were doing part of what God wanted but weren’t following all of His commands.

Isn’t that us? There are times in my life when my problem isn’t that I’m not following the Lord, my problem is that it’s partial obedience.

The Feast of Tabernacles, or Feast of Booths, was a reminder that they were called out of Egypt. When they got into the desert, God told them to collect branches and limbs of trees to have shelter. God then told them to do this every year as a remembrance, even when they had their homes to dwell in.

They were to live in shacks for a week. They were to go out, get some branches and sticks, and make booths for their families to live in.

They may have wondered why this was so important, especially since the wall was now complete. Sanballat and Tobiah must have shaken their heads in amazement. They made fun of the wall’s construction and now the people were busy building shacks. These lean-tos were scattered all over Jerusalem.

As the people applied God’s truth, they did it with an attitude of joy. Verse 17: And there was very great rejoicing. When God gives you insight, no matter how strange or difficult, cultivate an attitude of commitment and unreserved obedience. When you obey Him, you’ll have the deep satisfaction that you’re doing the right thing, no matter how hard.

If we are truly people of the Book, we’ll live by the Book. God will give us the grace to obey His Word! Please understand. While it’s the right thing to do and brings joy, obedience to the Lord often carries a price tag.

Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). That life is only found in obeying. First, you must put your trust in Christ. Then, in dependence upon Him, go where He wants you to go, do what He tells you to do. Jesus doesn’t want to ruin your fun. On the contrary, He wants to make your life full! These Jews read God’s Word, paid attention and had reverence for His truth, and when they understood it, they obeyed.

It’s what Elisabeth Elliot discovered when God called her to return to Ecuador to reach the very people, the Auca Indians, who slaughtered her husband, Jim, years before when she was a young mother. It was a place of great loss and pain. This is what she wrote about going back in her book, The Strange Ashes:

Obedience to God was the reason for this journey. It was a good thing for me to remind myself of the reason; because, on top of everything, it was really great fun. It was an adventure and held the thrill of an adventure, and if I put my mind on the things set before rather than on the things that were behind, I had no sense whatever of gritting my teeth and doing the thing I disliked. It was the thing I was made for and I was full of gladness.

That’s amazing! She was full of gladness! Most people would have been full of bitterness. Others would have wallowed in self-pity. Not Elisabeth, she found joy in obedience to God and so will you!

Obedience to God brings joy, even when it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to forgive your enemy, does it? It doesn’t make sense to pray for your enemies salvation and work to bring Christ to him so he can be saved. It doesn’t make sense to be faithful in your marriage when your spouse is mean. It doesn’t make sense to trust God when you have cancer. It doesn’t make sense to go to church when everyone else is sleeping in.

No wonder the world looks at Christians sometimes and thinks, “Those crazy Christians! What are they doing?” Obeying God doesn’t always make sense, but it does bring great joy! How crazy are you willing to be for Christ? Obeying and serving the Lord is often just a bit crazy!

Conclusion

Some people come to church with reverence for God and His Word, saying, “God, teach me! I want to know You more! I want to obey You!” They’re ready to respond to the Word. They profit from the teaching of Scripture just like these Jews. Others come to the same service with sin in their hearts that they don’t want to deal with. They’re turned off by the very same message that helps others to grow. Maybe they know that they don’t know Jesus but are rationalizing they’re going to wait or put it off until later.

My friend, if you want spiritual renewal, check your heart. It comes when responsive hearts read, reverently hear God’s Word faithfully proclaimed and most of all – obey! It’s where the joy is!

May these be our prayers: Lord, increase my desire for Your Word. Lord, increase my understanding of Your Word. Lord, increase my response to Your Word. Lord, increase my obedience to your Word.

Those are prayers that God will always answer and they bring great joy! And there was very great rejoicing (Nehemiah 8:17).